Day one: Observations from the BART shooting trial

Share this:

An art piece hangs at a small exhibition dedicated to Grant at Fernando’s Hideaway, a print shop, Internet cafe and gallery in downtown Los Angeles.

Here are some notes that jumped out of my notepad — but didn’t make my print article — on the first day of the Los Angeles murder trial of former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle in the caught-on-camera shooting of Oscar Grant on Jan. 1, 2009:

POWER OUTAGE: The case may be electric in the Bay Area, but as I chat with people outside the courthouse, near my hotel and at restaurants, most seem not to have heard of Grant, Mehserle or the killing on the platform of Fruitvale Station in Oakland. On Thursday night, I brought up the case with three young men as they ate sandwiches from a food truck that had the Lakers-Celtics game on. One said he had seen a video of the shooting, another said he had heard of the case but knew little about it, and the third said he planned to look into it.

SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE: Both sides, in pretrial documents and in Thursday’s opening statements, suggested that the evidence was overwhelming to either support — or debunk — the defense contention that Mehserle meant to use his Taser on Grant and accidentally shot him. An example of this came when the attorneys talked about the difference between how guns and Tasers are freed from their holsters. Prosecutor David Stein said Mehserle had to want to pull his gun to pull it, because of a hood and a special lever on the holster. But defense attorney Michael Rains said footage will show Mehserle struggled to get the gun out, succeeding only on the fourth yank.

RAINS’ PROMISE: The defense attorney said the Taser story would be bolstered by one of Grant’s friends, Jackie Bryson, who was near him when he was shot. I had earlier obtained Bryson’s interview with BART police after the shooting, and here’s the passage Rains must be referring to: “They slammed him. He already on his back. He on his stomach like this. And they got they knee in his neck. He all, ‘I’m going to Tase him.’ I don’t know what happened. All I heard was a pop. And when I seen the pop, they flipped him over and there was an exit wound that was bleedin’.”

STEIN’S PATIENCE: Meanwhile, Stein didn’t tell jurors in his opening statement about one of his strongest pieces of evidence, apparently wanting to hold on to it until later for effect. For hours after the shooting, Mehserle sat at BART headquarters with a fellow officer with whom he was close. According to that officer, Mehserle never mentioned the purported Taser mistake — only saying that he thought Grant had been going for a gun.

WAKE-UP CALL FOR JURORS: Judge Robert Perry had to stop the proceedings at one point during Rains’ opening statement. Rains is known as a captivating speaker, but apparently one juror had dozed off. After briefly excusing the panel, Judge Robert Perry brought the jurors back in and said, “If at any time you think you need a break, let me know.”

THE CLIFFHANGER: Speaking of Rains — the top choice of cops who get in trouble in the Bay Area — he had some classic moments of showmanship during his opening statement as he tried to connect with jurors. At one point he got all folksy and said he was just a “tired old cowpoke.” But what had many observers shaking their heads was what he did after the judge told him it was a good time for a lunch break. Rather than stop talking immediately, he left jurors with a cliffhanger. “We are now five seconds before the shooting,” he told them. “Something happens.”

PROSECUTION LAUDED: Stein, whose boss, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, was in the court gallery, was also on top of his game, in the eyes of Grant’s family. His opening statement resembled a PowerPoint presentation, as he made full use of two big flat-screen TVs in court. He sought to varnish his case with a sweeping start, referring to a law enforcement slogan that originated with the Los Angeles Police Department: “To protect and to serve.” “But what happens,” Stein asked, “when an officer or a group of officers believe their duty is something else than to protect and serve? The result will always be chaos, distrust and disorder.”

BACKGROUND NOISE: As attorneys play footage of the shooting over and over again, it’s hard not to get caught up in images of other BART riders and audio of what they were saying. Well before the shooting, one rider says on his phone, “We’re at Fruitvale right now. Yeah, Fruitvale with a FRUIT! Where you guys at?” But the noise quickly gets louder — and angrier — and as police officers use force on Grant and his friends, people can be heard shouting, “Let him go!” and “That’s f– up” and “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”

PROTEST PLANS: It will be interesting to see how many people attend a “mass protest” planned outside court starting at 7 a.m. Monday. While the case seems not to have captured the imagination of residents here, members of the Los Angeles Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant — the protest planner — say it should resonate in a city with a history of police brutality. “We never see anyone held accountable,” Aidge Patterson, a 30-year-old high school teacher with the group, told me Thursday night. “It shouldn’t take an activist to get upset about this.”